The present invention relates generally to social networking, and more particularly to systems and methods for measuring user affinity in a social network environment.
Conventionally, a user of a social networking website connects with other users by providing information about the user to the social network website for access by other users. For example, a user may post contact information, background information, current job position, hobbies, and so forth. Other users may review this information by browsing through profiles or entering keyword(s) into an internal search engine that searches the social networking site for profiles containing the keyword(s).
Recently, social networking websites have developed systems for better connecting users to the content most relevant to each particular user. For example, users may be grouped together in one or more groupings based on any common factor listed in their profile, such as geographical location, employer, job type, music preferences, and so forth. Parties within and outside of the social networking website utilize these groupings to target information that would be of interest to that particular community. For example, a social networking site may display banner ads advertising a concert too all users who list the performing band on their profile. As social networking has grown more popular, however, users and the information they provide on their profiles has greatly increased. Consequently, users are often inundated with information that is not necessarily the most relevant to a particular user.